Many situations call for the analysis of a body of electronically stored documents. One example is in electronic discovery. Electronic discovery (or e-discovery) may be referred to as the electronic aspect of identifying, collecting, and/or producing electronically stored information (ESI) performed in a manner that adheres to the established standards of evidence for the information to become admissible as legal evidence in a court of law. ESI may include, but is not limited to, emails, documents, presentations, databases, voicemails, audio and video files, social media, and web sites.
In the context of the discovery phase of litigation, an individual or organization (target party) may need to gather documents, such as documents in its possession, for submission to another party, such as an opposing party, in response to the opposing party's requests for production of documents (production requests). The production requests of the requesting party may cite categories of documents or types of information. Thus, the target party will evaluate its documents, such as documents in its possession, for those documents which are relevant to the cited categories of documents or types of information (relevant documents). Once gathered, the target party may further evaluate the relevant documents prior to production to the requesting party for various reasons, such as for the purpose of culling or segregating documents that may be subject to the attorney client privilege or attorney work product doctrine (privileged information). Once the documents are produced to the opposing party, the opposing party needs to analyze the documents.